"When did you—?" Obito's eyes widened.
"Did you forget? Speed is what I'm best at."
Obito's face fell. "We failed again."
"No." Kakashi tossed the bells to Obito. "You succeeded."
"What?" Obito fumbled to catch the bells and stared at Kakashi in confusion.
"All three of you pass."
"You just said... we passed?"
"Mm."
"But we didn't get the bells."
Kakashi slipped his hands back into his pockets. "The purpose of this exercise was to test your teamwork. If you had fought separately, then even if you managed to take the bells, you would still have failed. If you worked together but didn't get them, you still pass."
Guy froze.
Obito's mouth fell open.
Rin smiled.
"So, starting today..." Kakashi looked at the three of them. "This team is officially formed. I am your captain, Hatake Kakashi."
"Wait." Obito finally recovered. "That's way too..."
"Do you have a problem with it?" Nothing could be read from Kakashi's eye above his mask.
Obito opened his mouth to argue, but Rin gently tugged on his sleeve.
"Obito, Kakashi was actually helping us the whole time."
"Helping me? He spent the entire time mocking us!"
"He kept matching our pace and giving us chances to try different combinations," Rin explained. "If he had gone all out from the beginning, we wouldn't have lasted very long."
Obito fell silent.
He did not want to admit it, but Rin was right.
"Fine. But he acts way too arrogant for a captain. He never smiles and always looks like somebody owes him money."
"I heard that," Kakashi's voice drifted over from the side.
"It's true."
"Obito..." Rin tried to smooth things over.
"It's fine." Kakashi looked at Obito. "If you think I'm not qualified to be your captain, you can challenge me whenever you want."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Then I challenge you right now!"
"Not now." Kakashi looked up at the sky. "It's already noon, and besides..."
Obito's stomach gave a soft growl.
The training ground fell silent for a second.
"Meet back here at two this afternoon. We'll officially begin training then." Kakashi shook his head and prepared to leave.
"Wait." Guy stopped him.
"What is it?"
"Since we're officially members of the same team now..." The green headband bearing the word Youth gleamed on Guy's forehead beneath the sunlight. "Let us celebrate with a passionate meal of youth!"
"Exactly." For once, Obito immediately agreed with Guy. "Captain's paying."
Inside the ramen shop, the aroma of steaming tonkotsu broth filled the entire place.
Obito slapped the table. "Boss, give me an extra-large miso ramen with double chashu, double eggs, and double nori!"
Guy immediately followed. "I'll have an extra-large tonkotsu ramen with triple chashu! The stomach of youth requires triple energy!"
Rin sat between the two of them and smiled helplessly. "I'll just have a regular chashu ramen."
Finally, all three turned to look at Kakashi sitting across from them.
"One shio ramen."
"No!" Obito immediately objected. "How can you only eat one bowl when the captain is treating us? Add another chashu ramen!"
"Exactly." Guy nodded heavily. "A meal of youth cannot be half-hearted."
The corner of Kakashi's eye twitched as he looked at the two people who were clearly determined to empty his wallet, then at Rin beside them smiling as she tried to mediate.
In the end, he silently took out his wallet.
When the ramen arrived, Obito and Guy immediately buried their heads in their bowls, loud slurping sounds rising one after another.
Rin ate in small bites, occasionally glancing at Kakashi, who was quietly eating across from her.
Obito happened to look up and noticed.
His ramen instantly seemed less delicious.
"Kakashi, why don't you make any sound when you eat noodles?"
Kakashi raised his eyelid slightly. "A ninja should eat quietly."
"Nonsense. Loud slurping is the greatest form of respect you can show the chef," Obito argued stubbornly. "And the louder you slurp, the better the ramen tastes!"
With that, he deliberately sucked in a huge mouthful of noodles, producing an earth-shaking slurp.
Guy immediately responded.
"Exactly! This is the slurping sound of youth!"
Then he copied Obito and made an even louder slurping noise.
Every customer in the ramen shop turned to look at them.
Rin tugged on Obito's sleeve. "Obito, keep it down. Everyone's looking at us."
Kakashi silently turned his face toward the window and pretended he did not know any of them.
By the end of the meal, Kakashi's wallet had become noticeably thinner.
As they walked out of the ramen shop, Obito was still burping, looking thoroughly satisfied.
"Next time, Captain has to treat us again."
"..."
The days at the training ground passed one after another.
Kakashi's leadership style could be summed up in one word:
Strict.
During physical training, Obito's legs began trembling around the fiftieth lap. Guy had already completed eighty laps and was still accelerating. Rin gritted her teeth and kept pushing forward one step at a time, while Kakashi leaned against a tree watching them and occasionally said,
"Too slow."
During tactical coordination training, Kakashi fought all three of them by himself and managed to knock them all down within minutes every single time.
Obito was usually the first to charge in—and also the first to get knocked down.
Rin's medical ninjutsu improved considerably, mostly because she had so many opportunities to treat Obito and Guy's injuries.
"I can't take this anymore!" Obito lay flat on the training ground. "That bastard is definitely doing this on purpose."
"Kakashi's training is strict, but we really have gotten stronger." Rin handed him a damp towel.
"How have we gotten stronger? He still took me down in just a few moves yesterday."
"We're lasting longer and longer against him." Rin crouched beside him. "And Guy's taijutsu has improved a lot. Kakashi said he's becoming harder to deal with."
"That thick-browed guy was already a taijutsu monster." Obito covered his face with the towel.
"Kakashi is a jōnin, and we're genin. It's normal that we can't beat him."
At the other end of the training ground, Guy was pestering Kakashi for his one-hundred-and-second challenge.
"Kakashi! Today, I'll defeat you with my new technique!"
"Oh."
"What kind of reaction is that?! I spent three whole days developing this ultimate move—the Leaf Super Whirlwind!"
"How is that different from your Leaf Whirlwind?"
"It has two extra words."
"..."
Kakashi was about to say something when a voice came from the distance.
"Emergency mission."
A ninja handed Kakashi a scroll.
"The details are inside. Leave immediately after reading it."
Kakashi opened the scroll and quickly scanned its contents.
"What mission?" Obito leaned closer.
"Escort mission." Kakashi rolled up the scroll and placed it inside his ninja tool pouch. "Supplies need to be transported from Konoha to an outpost on the border of the Land of Fire."
"Escorting supplies?" Obito froze. "Isn't that just running errands?"
"You think escort missions are easy?"
"Of course they're easy. You're just taking something from one place to another."
~~~
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